The warlord known as Sony rides back to camp. He tells his generals there could be no parley with the lord Toshiba. They cannot decide whose sword will rule. No compromise can be reached. He commanded his generals to ride and muster soldiers from all corners of the land to prepare for the War of the Blue Light.
The War of the Blue Light will be waged across the land and all continents and different armies choose sides in this battle of epic proportions. On the small disk known only as DVD, many fortunes rest and not all will prosper or even survive. The tessen signals a war is imminent and nothing short of a miracle can prevent the battle at this point.
The warlord Sony contemplates the battle ahead. Sony has much to gain from this battle. The device known as PS3 will be able to utilize the Blu-Ray. The long, slender katana Blu-Ray is a mighty blade. It is longer than Toshiba’s blade. It is heavier, obviously folded many more times. The original blade takes longer to design and costs more but Sony believes its quality to be finer. It will hold up longer and will be used by more armies. Lo, the gaijin lord from the west, Disney has already sided with Sony. Disney’s resources are plentiful and he carries much weight with the others. He will be a mighty ally. The Dell warlord has also sided with Sony. He has great capacity to utilize the Blu-Ray design. He also carries much influence. Mighty Sony is glad of these allies. They will be needed when the battle begins.
While the scenario above may seem silly, for those of us looking at the future of technology, the inane fight over the DVD seems like something out of an old story or at least something out of the 80s. Toshiba and Sony negotiations have all but evaporated and execs are saying there’s basically no chance this will be worked out.
The problem, as a consumer, is that I don’t want to pay for their fight. The two DVD players are going to run for a couple of hundred bucks American, at least, maybe more and if I hold out for the PS3, almost $400. What’s the deal pickle? At a time when Alan Greenspan says we need to save more money because he and other economists don’t know where the economies going, we don’t need this in our entertainment sector.
We’ll have two types of DVDs to choose from. It could also mean if I have a Dell computer with Blu-Ray at home and an HP computer with HD-DVD at work, I might not be able to do work from home or even from the field perhaps. How much store space is Wal-Mart and Best Buy going to want to devote to all this stuff when they’ve got tons of products already? Is Circuit City going to carry HD-DVD and CompUSA jumping on board for Blu-Ray? Who Apple going to run with? And for that matter, whom’s Blockbuster going to run with? Both? I’ll have to sift through VHS tapes, old DVDs and two types of new DVDs?
This is entirely too complicated. Besides, I don’t have an HD-TV yet. Haven’t felt like spending the $1500 to get a good one. I guess I should wait until then to fool with this War of the Blue Light stuff anyway.
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
